Nodal, Patito, and I have been playing through the MGS series this month to get prepared for Phantom Pain (what really happened was I wanted to play them, streamed them, and then we ended up taking turns playing the games). MGS is still a good series and I'm glad I sucked Nodal into them because he didn't know anything about MGS up until now. He is now basically this post.

So, I pushed my way through the rest of the Peace Walker LP and am starting up playing Ground Zeroes. Can I just say visually, this is probably the most detailed and beautiful game I've seen, like, ever? I'm scared to see what Kojima did with an extra year and a half of development on the Fox Engine.

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

So watching my roommate play Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Panini is making me want to buy it despite not having played the rest of the series. (I watched most of my best friend's play through of MGS4, though, as well as some of MGS3)

PROLOGUE: this whole sequence felt very Sons of Liberty/Plant Chapter. Here's this guy telling me I've had extensive reconstruction, and I need to have my face changed, and now let me escape through this area filled with soldiers while following a guy who is very clearly demonstrating the kind of skills that I am allegedly supposed to possess? This franchise loves its doubles and cases of mistaken identity...

THE OPEN WORLD: Ocelot has exactly one thing to say about anything I care to examine, and it's getting pretty repetitive. I guess the tapes make up for this, but it's just not the same without terrible grainy footage or heads holding radio controls in their ears.

MOTHER BASE: Once it starts to expand, be sure to visit the outer platforms so you can do the target practice side mission and collect some diamonds that have no business being where they are. You can also collect posters here. (Note that you can modify cardboard boxes in the field with posters, similar to applying a suppressor to a gun.) I should have a lot more to say about this dumb game but I'm up way too late as it is.

Newbie wrote:THE OPEN WORLD: Ocelot has exactly one thing to say about anything I care to examine, and it's getting pretty repetitive.

The free-roaming bit is a fun change, but a bit empty sometimes. It's a fine line between a sandbox and a vacant lot.

Newbie wrote:I guess the tapes make up for this, but it's just not the same without terrible grainy footage or heads holding radio controls in their ears.

38% in, and it's kind of a bummer how it doesn't seem as... cinematic? Yeah, not as cinematic as the previous entries. Sure, people complained about 80-MINUTE CLOSING SCENE and whatnot, but you know what they say about not missing something until it's gone.

: Mention something from KPCC or Rachel Maddow: Go on about Homeworld for X posts

Ribbon: so i've been thinking, what if i were the head of konami and i were like Ribbon: hey, so i've got this idea to get us back out into the field again... listen up Ribbon: we've got this established IP and we put in dimensional travel and otherworldly monsters that the protagonists have to fight tooth and nail, usually with improvised weapons, in a weird cthonic hellscape... you don't know who you can trust and it's really desolate, you know- Ribbon: and you're like "yeah, yeah" Ribbon: ok so it's settled then:

のほも is such a good word?? the concept is kind of hard to fully get across in translation, but basically it means a feeling of pure, deep, platonic affection, and i think thats beautiful

Open with Big Boss and everyone else that matters abandoning the (private military) company they built up as it burns down, seemingly everyone left behind doomed. However, an outside force grabs everything that Big Boss left behind, literally ripping it from the context it belongs. Now we have a barren wasteland with nothing in it but death, and the only hope is for those who worked under Big Boss to use the destroyed scraps of what he built to save those who were left behind.

I think some remaining Konami employees may understand what's happening.

1. Well, Metal Gear's had supernatural ghost bullshit going on for a long time, and yeah we pointed and laughed but it was alright.2. So why does this feel so wrong?3. I guess until now Metal Gear never had big glowy sky portals randomly taking people with fucked up ideas about weapon practicality into the mineral zombie dimension.4. It seems Kojima managed to make his telekinetic assassins, undead psychics and lightning-powered Russians feel... grounded and restrained somehow. Like it was weird but it still kinda fit.5. HOLY SHIT THIS TRAILER MADE ME SAY THAT IN RETROSPECT KOJIMA'S WORK WAS GROUNDED AND RESTRAINED.